53,202

That's how many entries are in my steno dictionary.  I hadn't bothered to look at that number in years.  You know, you get good translation, you don't think about it.  The issue was brought to the fore because I needed to transfer the dictionary from one laptop to another for yesterday's job.  The necessity to transfer it in this case had to do with output to the attorneys' computers.  It is something that is very rarely requested in Vermont (nobody wants to pay our "exorbitant" fees for it), so every time someone comes in from Washington or New York or Chicago and requests realtime, I have to call tech support to remind me how to do it.  The newer laptop doesn't have a serial port, which is required for the output, blah blah blah.  The whole thing is a carousel ride of pains in my ass.  "If it's not one thing, it's another" is the general rule of these things.

But back to that number.  When I was trained by the NCI (at the expense of the BBC) to write captions for television, I remember they told me that, though it seems counterintuitive, the smaller dictionary is the better one.  It's all about consistent and efficient writing, using prefixes, suffixes, and root words.  And while at the BBC, I became a bigger and bigger fan of the one-stroke memorized brief form.  This requires more memorization, but each extra stroke that is necessary to write for a word increases the chances of a misstroke, so one is far better than four, in my mind.  Not to mention that writing a half or a fourth of the number of strokes, by the end of the day, leads to a lot less stress and tension. 

The two-week intensive training involved a military-style stripping down of me and my old methods, reducing me to a quivering pile of goo.  I went there with 80,000 entries in my dictionary, and they made me remove almost all of them, and leave only the "good" ones.  I believe when I arrived on British soil, I had about 9,000 entries.

On my first day at the BBC, my dear friend Andrew sat at my elbow, watching me write what I was listening to on a videotape.  Each time I would fall back into my old habits, he'd shout, "STOP! Now go back and write it RIGHT!"  I broke down and cried.  I said, "This was a mistake.  I am not good enough for this.  I will never be able to do this!  You should send me back." 

Six weeks later, to the day, I was on the air writing Wimbledon -- with the infamous "knockers/mockers" mistake, but still, I was there.  A month after that, I was doing all the news and current events programs they could throw at me.  So anyone out there who thinks, "I can't do this," you can.  You who are learning today have the advantage of learning it the right way from the beginning, not having to literally unlearn everything you had had ingrained in you for 15 years or so. 

But...back to that number again.  When the tech support person said to me, "Let's see if your transfer was successful.  Tell me the number of entries in the dictionary of the old laptop versus the new," and when I said the number, he expressed concern.  "That's nothing compared to a lot of people!  Most people have well over 100,000."

And we know what the moral of that story is, don't we?

Comments

[Rabbitch]

Baby, we've always known you're not "most people". And as someone who has transcribed *mumble*hundred interviews, depositions, hearings and meetings verbatim via dictaphone, plus being one of the last dinosaurs who still knows (and occasionally uses) shorthand, I find this whole dealie fascinating.

[Dixie]

Wow. You know, I have a "fix" dictionary going for one of my reporters who just will NOT update her dictionary that has over 3,000 entries. Color me impressed.

[marianne]

Amazing. And yes, this whole thing you do as work is incredibly fascinating.

[Carole]

OK. I'll go along with your "less is more" theory. Just don't apply it to my yarn stash.

[Roxie]

Persistence should be counted as one of the cardinal virtues. What a virtuous woman you are! I am mind-boggled that you can do real-time captioning and then switch to ordinary typing and be ragingly successful at both! It's like speaking both English and Chinese fluently. Most people aren't even fluent in their native language. Your brain must be ginormous!

[Abigail]

Indeed, Indeed! What you have here is a classic case of "it's not how big it is -- it's what you do with it that matters?" It takes a Hamilton Scholar like me to understand these things of course...

Luv, yer kid.

[Gwen]

It hurts to get past good to excellent.

[Kit]

It's similar in nursing in that I was required to bring everything with me so I could reduce the number of physical walking steps it would take me to do something. I had pockets filled with gloves (non-latex) and alcohol pads and though I still haven't been terribly good at it, I have improved and I seek ever to improve.

It's true that anything is possible if we put our minds to it.

[Sara]

I'm totally in awe of having that many words... I have an English degree and still have multiple brain cramps per day regarding correct work/ vocabulary usage!!

[Gillian]

I think all that stuff in your brain has a good chance of helping it work well for many years.

[Steph B.]

35,942 entries for me. Of course I haven't been reporting as long as you have, but I have been trying to follow those guidelines too. Eclipse rocks, doesn't it? I fully expected I'd have a lot more than that. Your post prompted me to go and look. I've been trying to thin things as I come across them. Sometimes things pop up that I have no idea how they even got in there! But then, computers do have minds of their own... I do a fair amount of LiveNote, etc, out here in California and do not have a serial port. You can get a USB to serial adapter that will do the job for you then you don't have to switch computers.

[Rachel H]

I'm just gonna have to take your word for it. Or drink more coffee.

[Cookie]

Does this mean you survived yesterday? Or did you write this ahead of time? ♥

[Carol]

OMG, the Knockers/Mockers was you???! You're famous! I always say, if it ain't one thing, it's two things.

[sandy]

They do say that size does not matter. Do we agree? I mean, really??
:D
Stay strong..

[Jonelle]

Yer my hero. Of course, I'm still trying to figure out a way to learn the frackin' steno keyboard, myself. The long paaaaaauuuuuuuse while I try to remember (without peeking) where the heck the key is that I want to hit frustrates the heck out of me. And then, I remember how long it took me to learn to type with any speed and I want to rip my hair out. Arrrgh! Isn't there an easier way?! *sigh* whine over. :)

[Helen]

Ummm, what is this "knockers/mockers" thing?

[Lucia]

You make me want to run right out and learn stenography.

[LauraG]

Love your work related ramblings! Especially the captioning errors knocker/mockers and the recent "sensitivities". What a colorful vocabulary you must have. I am sooo glad that I did not even consider this career path! I can easily forgive TV captioning errors, but can you tell me why the idiots that caption or subtitle movies on DVD can't get it right. There's an F-ing script to follow! The example that annoys me most is in 2005 Pride & Prejudice: "censure of the world" is translated to "center of the world". grumble,grumble... end of rant. ummm, knitting anything lately?